


And Now I Am Back Here Again

by mytimehaspassed



Series: Moon Fever [10]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Ghosts, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-05
Updated: 2012-08-05
Packaged: 2017-11-11 12:27:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>LAST INSTALLMENT OF THE MOON FEVER SERIES. </p>
<p>Allison looks at Stiles over the kitchen table, her hands flat. “I know about Peter,” she says. “And Scott.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Now I Am Back Here Again

**AND NOW I AM BACK HERE AGAIN**  
TEEN WOLF  
Derek/Stiles; Lydia/Jackson/Isaac; (non-con) Peter/Stiles  
 **WARNINGS** : ghost!AU; (so obviously) main character death; graphic depiction of decay; non-consensual touching  
 **NOTES** : The **LAST INSTALLMENT** of the Moon Fever Series

First: [You With Air](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/26839.html)  
Second: [Nothing But Heart](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/27050.html)  
Third: [As We Walk Into the Night](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/27153.html)  
Fourth: [With the Heart of a Child](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/27466.html)  
Fifth: [When it was Dark I Called and You Came](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/27884.html)  
Sixth: [We're Sitting on a Ruin](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/28229.html)  
Seventh: [Burn the Others Down](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/28667.html)  
Eighth: [But Something in My Heart is Loose](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/28870.html)  
Ninth: [Your Name Burns in My Mouth](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/28991.html)

Allison looks at Stiles over the kitchen table, her hands flat. “I know about Peter,” she says. “And Scott.”

It’s been three days since Stiles opened his mouth, a week since Derek had told Lydia and Jackson and Isaac to pack all of their things, crowding Stiles into the small space between the door and the shell that used to be the front window, Derek’s mouth hovering over Stiles’ mouth, his hands gripping both of Stiles’ wrists hard, his breath quivering with fear or something equally as close. 

“I’m coming back,” Derek had said, over and over and over again. He had kissed Stiles and Stiles had kissed back, and he had felt Derek’s tears wet against his ghostly cheeks, and nothing about this had been fair, but Stiles only had one person to blame. 

“I’m coming back,” Derek had said, until his voice was nothing but a whisper, and Lydia had placed a small, firm hand on Derek’s arm and told him that they were ready. 

Derek hadn’t told Stiles that he loved him, but Stiles had never even given him a chance. 

“I know about what he’s been doing to you,” Allison says, and her hands are soft and cold when she places them on Stiles’ hands. She had taken Derek aside the night Stiles had freaked out, had told him what Peter would do if they didn’t leave. Stiles had felt Derek’s anger radiating through the floorboards from where he sat in the attic, curled up and unable to keep his eyes open, unable to shake Peter’s touch from his ghostly skin. 

Stiles slides his hands out from underneath Allison’s palms and says, “What, you can even read the minds of ghosts?”

“No,” Allison says, and she looks paler than she should. “But I can read Peter’s.” 

Stiles swallows once, and his throat burns. “Then you know what he asked me to do to you.” His voice is small, but steady, completely devoid of emotion. 

“Yes,” she says. “I know.”

“Then you know that you should leave, too,” Stiles says, and doesn’t look at her. 

***

Scott pulls him away in the middle of the night. The flesh on his jaw has completely melted away and Stiles finds it hard to look at him when he talks, the white bone moving up and down in a way that feels like a bad Halloween prank. 

“How are you doing with the Allison situation?” He asks, and Stiles watches as part of his cheek slithers down the side of his face and falls to the floor of Peter’s bedroom, bloody and raw. 

Stiles looks at him, horrified, and Scott smiles, half of his teeth missing. 

“I mean,” Scott says, and he raises a hand, but one of his fingers falls to the floor next to the piece of his cheek. “I’m pretty patient, but I’m not so sure about Peter.”

Stiles can feel the numb, cold air of the room seep through him, and he tries to wrap an arm around his torso for some kind of comfort, but he’s not even close to being solid. “I’m trying,” he says, and his voice is so far beyond betrayal that Scott actually laughs. 

“You might want to work on your lying skills,” Scott says. And one of his ears shuffles quietly down the side of his face, getting caught in the confines of his jacket. 

***

Allison sleeps all day in the darkened basement of Stiles’ house and it would be so easy, so fucking easy, to tiptoe down the steps and find something sharp and wooden and pierce her heart the way Stiles has seen in every bad vampire movie. Stiles imagines that Allison will give him a look before she dies, a sad, trembling look that says more about the duplicity Stiles had perfected than the life flashing before her eyes. 

Stiles doesn’t know if lives really flash before people’s eyes when they die. 

He doesn’t remember that part. 

***

Scott visits him again, but this time the sun is just rising over the mountains in the distance and Stiles is huddled small in his mother’s quilt on the living room couch, watching the basement door with a heavy gaze. Scott brings Peter with him, and Peter touches Stiles’ arm and Stiles tries to move away, but can’t. 

Scott’s left hand is completely bare, the knots in the bones of his fingers white and clean. 

“I keep telling Scott that you just aren’t man enough for this job,” Peter says, and his breath touches Stiles’ ghostly cheek. Stiles has his arms around his legs, his chin resting on his knees, and Peter lays a hand on Stiles’ bare ankle, and Stiles closes his eyes. “I keep telling him that we need to ask Derek to do it, instead.”

Stiles opens his eyes at that, and Peter is smiling next to him. 

“Well,” Peter says, “It won’t really be asking.” 

Stiles chokes, and Peter’s hand turns into a claw. “I’ll do it,” Stiles says, and he sounds quiet and calm, and it makes him feel sick. “I’ll do it.”

Peter tightens his grip. “If you don’t, Stiles,” and he’s growling, his voice raking over Stiles’ ghostly skin like metal. “If you even think for a second that you can tell her to get out of town or something just as stupid, I will come back here and I will slit her throat right in front of you.” 

Scott isn’t smiling, but his jaw glints white in Stiles’ peripheral. 

Peter’s nostrils are flaring, and his claws are still sharp on Stiles’ ankle. “And then I will bring Jackson and Lydia and Isaac back here and I will show you exactly how an Alpha deals with a pack that won’t behave.” 

Stiles inhales sharply, and Peter opens his mouth and his teeth are more fangs than anything else. 

“And don’t think Derek won’t be dealt with,” Peter says. “He might be next in line to become Alpha, but he is still my submissive, no matter the lack of respect he has for me.” 

“Please,” Stiles says, and it’s nothing if not pathetic. “Please don’t.”

“Don’t worry.” And Peter is moving his mouth close to Stiles’ mouth, and he brushes a kiss on the corner of Stiles’ lips, and Stiles is gutted and still. “Derek’s punishment won’t be death. Even if he might wish for it.”

Scott sits on the arm of the couch, and Stiles closes his eyes at the rotting smell that clings to what’s left of his flesh. 

***

He sits in the kitchen as the sun sets, holding what’s left of the table in his hands, something sharp and full of splinters. It was relatively easy to control his thoughts, to concentrate on the table and move it slowly, move it quietly in the direction of the wall. At first, it just jostled a little bit, shaking under Stiles’ pointed gaze, but then it moved a foot to the side, and then moved again, and Stiles kept thinking about the sound it would make when it hit the wall, the spectacular crash as the wood crumbled, and then it was gone, in the air and against the wall and cracking under the weight of Stiles’ mind. 

Stiles can’t remember the last time he felt so powerful. 

He sits on the dusty chair and he holds the biggest piece of wood from the mess on the floor and he waits, watching as the sun sinks lower and lower beneath the horizon. The light is playing on the basement door, crawling down and down and down even further, and Stiles feels nothing. 

For the first time since he saw him in Peter’s house, rotting away, Stiles wishes that Scott was here, if only so he could scream and yell and cry and pretend that none of this was his choice. He wishes that Peter was here, if only so he could pretend that it was Peter with his hand on the stake, if only so he could pretend that Peter forced him into this with more than words, more than just a few whispers from the rotting corpse of his best friend. 

He can hear Allison stirring downstairs, shuffling quietly from her makeshift bed in the middle of the dark basement to the stairs, and then up one step, and then up another. 

Stiles knows that she will look beautiful when she emerges, sleep creasing her cheek, her eyes dark and inviting. Stiles knows that he will back down at first, say that he wasn’t really going to do it. Stiles knows that she will look confused at the mess on the floor, look confused at the stake in his hand, and tell him that, no, that she can fix this, because this is all just a game that Peter is playing, that they are all just pawns lining up for the slaughter, that Stiles is forfeiting his queen before he even plays one solid move, but he won’t say anything to make her feel like she’s won. 

He doesn’t even think that he would be able to say anything. 

He doesn’t even think that he would be able to tell her that he’s sorry. 

She slinks up the steps, and Stiles can hear her hand gliding over the bannister, can hear her feet as she moves. She can be as quiet as Derek when she wants to be, but Stiles knows that she’s giving him a show. 

The knob starts to turn and Stiles readies himself, his hand on the stake. He doesn’t take one last moment to talk himself out of this, he doesn’t even think. 

And Allison opens the door. 

***

When he was a boy, Stiles’ mother would cup his hands in her own on the hard wooden floor of his bedroom, both of their elbows perched wide on the cushion of his bed, her mouth hovering just above his ear, and pray with him at night. 

“Now I lay me down to sleep,” she would whisper, his lips moving in the same way hers did, her fingers aligned perfectly with his own, only longer, only more delicate than his rough, calloused, little boy fingers. 

“I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” she would say, and Stiles would stumble over the words sometimes, his voice rising and lowering in pitch, louder with the words he knew by heart, smaller with the words he wasn’t quite sure about. 

Later, he would remember this more than anything else. Later, he would recall her sweet voice in his ear, the way she would kiss his cheek in between phrases, in between words, her hair tickling his bare neck. 

“And if I should die before I wake,” she would say, her perfume swelling up and up and around Stiles then, as he breathes in carefully, as he feels her heartbeat where she holds him against her chest, the way she feels warm around him, the way she feels alive. 

Later, this would be what he remembers the night he wakes up choking on thick, black smoke as the fire starts and catches in his room, as he hears glass shattering, as he feels the rumble of the cracking wood beneath his feet. Later, this would be what he remembers as he calls out for his father, the heat rising and rising and rising, his eyes watering, his lungs aching for air. 

“I pray the Lord my soul to take,” she would say. 

And, later, as his hands start to burn, as his legs and his arms and his feet start to feel hot and dry and tight and unable to move, as he lays there somewhere on the floor only feet from his bed, only feet from the doorway, his whole body stretched out and trying to force himself to crawl towards his father, towards the sounds he had heard before he had fallen, his eyes red and swollen and glazed over from the tears. 

Later, much later, this would be what he remembers when he dies. 

“Amen.”

***

The first thing Allison says when she steps through the door at the top of the basement steps is, “I’m sorry.”

Stiles holds out the stake between them like some warped peace offering, some kind of silly defense he’s not entirely sure he thought out that well, and he blinks and stills and wants so badly to shake his head in confusion, but he knows he wouldn’t be able to move even if he tried. 

“What?” he says. 

Allison doesn’t move from where she’s standing, her back flush against the door, her hand on the knob, maybe as a poor attempt to mark an escape route. She says it again, “I’m sorry,” but before Stiles can say something sarcastic and high-pitched and utterly inappropriate about how he knows what “I’m sorry” means, he just doesn’t know why she’s saying it to him when he’s blatantly holding out a stake between them with a clear intention to kill her, she says, “I created him.”

And then she says, “I created Scott.”

The stake drops through Stiles’ now see-through hand and he can feel cold air blowing through him, as though his insides were nothing. “What do you mean you created Scott?” he says, and his voice is embarrassingly squeaky, embarrassingly soft. 

Allison looks as though she’s about to cry, her eyes wet and shiny in the light from outside, and her voice is rough and Stiles knows she sat downstairs in the dark thinking this through, thinking about every word she’s about to say to him now. “Peter found me in California a little before I came here,” she says. “I was running from someone. He gave me an offer of protection. I took it.” 

Her hand is shaking on the doorknob as she speaks, and she takes it off and places it flat on her stomach. The sun continues to sink beneath the horizon, dipping low enough that Stiles almost has to strain to see Allison’s outline against the door. 

“The only condition was that I use my powers against you, Stiles,” she says, and swallows hard. “I didn’t know about Derek, I didn’t know about any of this. I remembered you as kind, but I also remembered you as sad and lonely, and Peter told me that what I did to you, what I’m doing, would help you move on. That maybe after this, you’ll be able to go wherever you need to go. That maybe you’ll finally see your family.”

Stiles can feel his feet start to evaporate, the way they go still and start to thin, start to seem intangible, and he feels the cold travel up his body, up and up and up. Stiles knows what’s coming next. 

“I created Scott from what you told me, what I remembered him as, and then let you fill in the blanks. Your mind is so powerful, Stiles, you don’t even know.” She’s starting to cry now, the tears that run down her cheeks shining in the dark. “Peter told me what to make him say, what to make him do, and I did it. I forced that on you. I am so sorry.” 

Stiles doesn’t say anything, and he can feel his legs start to go, his hands, his arms, his elbows. 

“After all of this, after everything, I know what I did was wrong,” she says. “I know that none of this was helping you move on. I want you to know that I never meant to hurt you, Stiles. I never meant for any of this happen.”

Stiles can’t feel his chest anymore, can’t feel his shoulders. 

“Please forgive me,” Allison says, her arms wrapped tight around her. “Please.”

And it’s not that Stiles doesn’t want to say anything before he disappears. 

It’s that the pull is too strong. 

***

He doesn’t end up in the attic. 

That’s something new.

***

When he opens his eyes, Derek is standing over him, a relieved smile on his face. 

“Hi,” he says, and Stiles moves so fast that Derek doesn’t even have time to take a step back, and Stiles is wrapping his arms around him, and burying his face in Derek’s neck. Stiles doesn’t care how he got here, the motel room Derek has apparently been staying in with Jackson and Lydia and Isaac, but he cares that Derek is here now, his warm arms enfolding Stiles in his embrace, his heat soaking through Stiles like the core of the sun. 

“I love you,” Stiles says, and it’s rough and his throat hurts from the sound. 

“I love you, too,” Derek says, and he holds on tighter, pressing his lips to Stiles’ head. 

***

Stiles doesn’t tell him about Allison. Stiles doesn’t tell him about the dreams, or about Scott and the way he would appear at night slowly rotting from the inside out, or about Peter and the way he had kissed him in the dark, soft and full of malice. 

He sits on the bed with Derek on one side and Jackson on the other, both of their hands hovering over him, and he tells them about Peter’s plans and about what he will do if he knows that Stiles is here, now, with them. Lydia makes a noise from where she sits on Isaac’s lap in the armchair, her hands in Isaac’s hair. 

Derek starts to growl, but Stiles grips his fingers tightly, bringing them up to his mouth. “We have to kill him,” he murmurs, his lips wet on Derek’s warm skin. “I know you don’t think you’re ready, but you’re ready.”

Derek tries to pull his hand away, but Stiles doesn’t let him. “You have your own pack, Derek,” he whispers, and Derek’s mouth is a tight, white line. “You’ve been making your own pack since you left him. That’s why he wants you back so badly. He knows the kind of Alpha you’ll be.” 

Jackson moves closer to Stiles, his warmth like a shield enveloping him, and Stiles feels something in his chest start to move, something he hasn’t felt in a long, long time. 

“You can take over his whole pack,” Jackson says. “We’ll follow you.”

“I don’t want his whole pack,” Derek says, and his voice is gruff. His hand is solid in Stiles’ hand, hot enough to burn. “I just want you,” and he looks at Stiles, and then at Jackson, and Lydia, and Isaac. “All of you.”

“Then fight for us,” Stiles says, and pushes up to kiss him. 

***

They wind their way up into the hills, towards Peter’s house. The woods are quiet, and the moon is out, but nowhere near being full, which Derek says will work to their advantage. 

Stiles is silent in the passenger seat of Derek’s car, and he can hear Jackson speaking softly in Isaac’s ear, can feel Lydia moving, pressing her hands into Jackson’s sweater. Derek has been less than enthusiastic about Stiles coming with them, had at first used words like You wouldn’t understand, and then something about this being a pack thing, and then had stopped demanding altogether and had dropped to his knees, his hands fitting over Stiles’ hands, pleading, pleading for him to go back to the house, his fingers digging into Stiles’ ghostly skin, so hot that they actually hurt. 

Stiles had told him that nothing was stopping him from coming, that none of this would work without him, and he may have been exaggerating a little, but it was more or less the truth. He knew that Allison would be there, and he’s intimately familiar with what kind of pull Peter has, and he had told Derek that he will never step foot in that house without him, and Derek had stilled all at once, silent, and then stood up, nodding sharply, his face shuttering closed. 

The driveway to Peter’s house is empty and still, and they wind up and up and Derek stops in front of the house and turns off the car’s engine and sits there for a moment, as if to ask if they were ready, before he pulls open the door and starts up the walkway. Stiles and Jackson and Lydia and Isaac follow, and Derek doesn’t bother with knocking or ringing the door bell, mostly because none of this have been exactly stealth, and Peter probably smelled them coming a mile away. 

They walk in, and Peter is there in the living room, a bottle of whiskey in hands, and when he sees Stiles, he smiles. “It was so nice of you drop off these presents, Stiles,” he says. “But you can say your goodbyes and leave now.” 

Derek makes a sound low in his throat, and Peter raises one of his eyebrows, but he’s still smiling sharply, more amused than afraid. 

Stiles doesn’t hover by Derek, doesn’t cower or tremble, but if he were alive, he knows his heart would be pounding. 

“Oh,” Peter says, as Allison steps out from the kitchen. “I found a friend of yours earlier this evening. It was nice running into her again.” 

Stiles can briefly feel the confusion run through the other werewolves, but he doesn’t say anything. Allison looks like she’s been crying, her eyes red and swollen, and she mouths the words I’m sorry again, even as Stiles turns away. 

“I don’t want to hurt you, Peter,” Derek says, and Stiles knows it’s the truth, even if he doesn’t want it to be. “But we’re not coming back again. We’re out of this pack.” 

Peter narrows his eyes, and Stiles can feel Jackson behind him shifting, his hands turning into claws. 

“And you won’t try to manipulate us into coming back. And you won’t come near Stiles,” Derek is saying, his eyes becoming blue and then ice blue. “And you won’t come near the rest of us. Is that understood?”

Peter starts to laugh, and Stiles feels something in his stomach drop out, and he feels cold, and in the second it takes him to close his eyes and then open them again, Peter is no longer human in front of them, but a big, black wolf. Derek starts to growl, and then he shifts fully, his claws tearing themselves out with an agonizing sound. Derek leaps for Peter, and Stiles watches as Lydia shifts, too, and then Isaac, and then all three of them are following Derek’s lead, jumping on Peter, snarling and snapping their jaws, gnashing their fangs. 

Allison moves around them and takes Stiles by the arm and drags him up the stairs, and Stiles feels solid and unyielding, but he lets her shove him. “Come on,” she says, and her voice is unsteady and afraid. They hide in the room full of boxes, Allison tucking him in between two big stacks, her arms on him cold and unforgiving. 

He can feel her shake beside him, and he wants to turn around and hug her, but everything about this feels wrong. They can hear the fight downstairs, the yelps and angry howls and the smashing of furniture, the sickening cracks of bone and splintered wood. Stiles hears what he thinks is Derek at one point, a howl that sounds scared and hurt and alone, and he moves to get up, but Allison pulls him back down. 

“Please,” he says, but she’s saying no, shaking her head, and he wants to cry, he wants to pull away from her, because nothing about this has been fair so far. 

It ends almost like it began, and there’s five minutes of silence downstairs, five minutes where Stiles sits huddled close to Allison straining to hear anything, the shuffle of feet or maybe Derek’s voice, but there’s nothing, and Stiles waits until he can’t wait anymore, and then he’s pushing Allison away from him and running out the door and down the steps, his feet not quite touching the floor, and the living room is a mess of wood and glass and fur and blood, and Stiles follows the trail out the door and around the house and stills when he sees them. 

Derek is standing tall above Peter on the ground, both having shifted back to their human forms. Jackson and Lydia and Isaac are all close, near to where Stiles had stopped, and they’re all panting, all bleeding, but Stiles doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at them, and there’s this heavy silence in the air, and Stiles moves a little closer, his hand reaching out for Derek. 

Peter must have broken something, because Stiles can just make out a flash of white underneath all of the blood, something that hasn’t had the chance to heal yet, and he’s not whimpering and he’s not whining, but Stiles can see the pain written all over him. 

“This is my pack now,” Derek says, and his voice is low and quiet, and there’s blood on his face, but not as much as there is on Peter’s, and Peter looks up at Derek and something passes over him, something that both of them understand more than Stiles does, and Derek’s hand is still a mess of bloody claws, and he looks at Stiles once, his expression made up of something dark, and it’s almost like he’s asking for permission, almost like he’s making sure that this is okay, and then he turns back around and slashes Peter’s throat. 

Stiles makes a sound, something that almost seems like surprise, and then he says, “Derek?”

And when Derek turns around, his eyes are glowing red.


End file.
